Step 6: Tempering the Chocolate

Step 7: Using the Chocolate!

If you need some hints on how to use the chocolate, I think Instructables might have your back. Bon appetit!

Chocolate is a food that is simultaneously ubiquitous and mysterious. Chocolate is everywhere - in cakes, in candies, in beverages. Yet few people really know how chocolate is made. Even fewer have actually set their eyes on a cocoa bean, much less a cocoa pod.

After extensive research, I've discovered chocolate's dirty little secret - it's a piece of cake to make at home.

And if your family is impressed by homemade truffles and cakes, imagine how they'll feel when you had them a bar of home-freaking-made chocolate.

Chocolate manufacture requires six steps.

First comes fermentation and drying. The beans are harvested from the pods, and allowed to naturally ferment over a period of two days to two weeks. Heat kills the delicate germinating seed, and natural yeasts grow to develop complex flavors. The beans are then sun-dried to preserve them for shipping.

Next, the beans are roasted. Cocoa beans are roasted for the same reason that coffee beans are - to develop complex flavors via the Maillard reaction, and to drive off unpleasant acidic compounds developed in the fermentation process.

Cracking and winnowing follow roasting. This step is purely mechanical, to separate the valuable nibs from the worthless shells.

After this, the nibs must be refined. The tongue can perceive particles larger than 30 micrometers in size, so extensive grinding is needed for a good mouthfeel.

The raw cocoa liquor is then "conched," a lengthy process which drives off the rest of the acidic flavoring compounds.

Finally, the finished product is tempered to give the chocolate good gloss and snap.

Unfortunately, cocoa pods are practically impossible to get your hands on. So we'll (unfortunately) have to start at the second step, with pre-fermented and dried cocoa beans.

Hi, thanks so much for taking the time to prepare such a thorough tutorial. I already had raw organic cocoa nibs so I just roasted them for 12 mins at 150 degrees celcius. When I took them out, the whole kitchen smelt like brownies, as promised by someone's blog I followed. However, a quarter of the nibs were almost black. I went ahead with the recipe, following the instructions closely (except for the cocoa butter suggestion – I didn't add it as my machine was handling it fine). In the end, it had a bitter aftertaste, but maybe that's to be expected as I probably slightly burnt the beans and plus it is a 70% chocolate. To distract from the bitterness I spread the chocolate on some baking paper and added roasted almonds and Craisins. Thanks again :)

I just want to thank you for your fine instructable! I was having second thoughts about this but, after seeing your video, I did it! It came out sub par, but I know what I did wrong and I will have this down in no time. I did kill my spice grinder.

Hi loved your instructable, I actually got my beans from a fresh cacao pod, I followed another tutorial I found on how to ferment them. I roasted them per your directions but I never got the grinding to liquify like yours and it turned a deep purple color instead of brown. I was wondering if I roasted them for to long.

I learned how to make chocolate powder when I was eight because my grandmother owned a cacao tree. We even ate the flesh. Too bad they had to cut that beautiful plant down when they had to renovate the house. Goodbye homemade chocolate.

Congrats on your winning! I followed your tutorial...but used sugar cane instead of white sugar...my end product tastes tarty/sour...and once held after the tempering it melts in the hands...is it possible that I am not tempering enough? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Will do. Right now, I want to focus on creating more trees (and fruit) and once I have that, I need to figure out how to ferment small batches successfully. From what I've seen, it takes several hundred pounds to generate enough heat to ferment properly. Alternatively, there is a company in town that buys the pods from the farmers. I would prefer to do my own though.

very impressive! Mongpoovian I would like to know, can you make chocolate Cadbury's unsweetened cocoa powder? 70%cocoa +30% sugar. The reason why i ask is because in the past i made my own chocolate,which was cready made unsweetned cocoa powder and sugar and water,after a week out of the fridge it became moldy.I was surprised since I didnt think cocoa could get mouldy.It was kept at room temperature in the kitchen. Thanks

The water's the problem - chocolate has very little water in it (less than 1% by weight!) and so is inhospitable to bacteria and mold. Instead of using water to mix the solids together, you should use a fat that's solid at room temperature. Cocoa butter would be ideal for this, as it was what was originally removed from the cocoa solids to make the cocoa powder in the first place! Many drugstores sell pure cocoa butter for cosmetic use.

A mixture you might use for a "dark" chocolate containing additional cocoa butter might be something along the lines of 60% cocoa powder, 20% cocoa butter, 20% sugar.

If you can't find cocoa butter, coconut oil might serve as a reasonable substitute, but it melts at a much lower temperature (76 °F/24 °C) than cocoa butter (approximately body temperature).

Milk itself won't work, because the moisture will cause the chocolate to seize. Cream wouldn't seize the chocolate, but you'd end up with something closer to ganache. :)

PearlZenith's got it right - you'd want to add powdered milk, either at the end of the grinding process or during the conching step - that will ensure that the milk is evenly distributed. Typical milk chocolates are around 45-55% cocoa solid, so you'd want to add about 30% sugar (by weight) and then 20% powdered milk (also by weight). For a hundred gram batch, that would be 50 grams cocoa nibs, 30 grams sugar, and 20 grams powdered milk.